Palimpsest
by nymphett
Summary: › After receiving unfortunate news, Briony and her mother move to Los Angeles. She does not know that it is the Murder House, and that a boy has been watching her.
1. Chapter 1

**This takes place 15 years after the season one finale. ****Not Mary-Sue fic or Tate sympathizing, but this storyline came to me yesterday and I couldn't resist. Heavily inspired by the song "Ghost" by Emilie Autumn. I am not a part of the Tate fangirl mob, but I do appreciate how he is written as an interesting character. I also appreciate Evan Peters' dimples.**

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><p><em>Did you know that sometimes it frightens me when you say my name and I can't see you? Will you ever learn to materialize before you speak, impetuous boy? If that's what you really are.<br>_

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><p>When Briony sees him for the first time she thinks that he is a hallucination. It wouldn't be the first time that she saw something that wasn't there - God knows her doctor insisted that it wasn't a side effect of her medication, and looked at her like she was a nutcase when she suggested the idea. Things got worse after she got diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. It didn't help the stress when her mother pulled her out of school and made them move to Los Fucking Angeles. Her mom swears that it wasn't because she was ashamed, but Briony sees the look on her mother's face when one of her fits start.<p>

_Her specific case of Parkinson's isn't bad, Elizabeth,_ Dr. Singh tells her mother, _she got lucky._Briony wants to kick him in the teeth when he says shit like that. Sure, her spine's doing okay right now, but it'll get worse as she gets older. She'll lose motor control, and probably won't be able to get around on her own by the time she's forty. Really lucky, right? Briony hates her hands, her giveaway. She hates how frail they look; how they always shiver and twitch and need to move.

Briony knows she isn't crazy, but hopes that she is just for the moment. Because there is someone standing in the doorway of her bedroom and he doesn't seem to be going away. She squeezes her eyes shut and pretends that she is asleep. The air is still and her blanket feels thick and heavy above her. Her leg is twitching as bad as her hands, and she can him breathing at the door.

"_Hey_,"

Briony jumps but doesn't open her eyes. The voice was that of a teenaged boy, soft and piercing and as real as she is. She thinks that if he is an hallucination, she wishes he would go away. And if he is a real and a murderer, she wishes that he would just kill her and get it over with. Briony takes uneven, shallow breaths. After what feels like hours later, she opens her eye just a bit and peers at the door.

He's gone.

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The next morning Briony doesn't tell her mother about what she saw, because she knows that she wouldn't believe her. Briony isn't sure that she would believe herself.

By the time Briony is up, around 9:50, her mother has already finished her first glass of wine of the day and is cooking one of those horrible spicy smelling recipes from her cookbook, the one she had published when Briony was only a baby. '_Hot Mama_ by Elizabeth Kenney' had been aimed at single mothers who wanted to cook cheap, exotic meals. It had been a smash success, and even landed on the New York Times Best Seller List.

After they moved from Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, it was the cookbook that gave them the funds to purchase the house. It was the ten times the size of the old one, and gave Briony a creepy-crawly feeling the moment she first walked in. But her mother had fallen in love with it, and raved on the phone to her friends about the deal she'd found, gloating about the hardwood floors and the maid that came with the price. But Briony didn't give a shit about hardwood floors, and the maid (with her staring, milky eye) gave her the creepy-crawlies, too.

As Briony watched her mother cooking and contemplated the boy she had seen last night, The maid Moria came up behind her. She was good at that, sneaking up on people. Briony swore that her feet didn't even touch the floor when she walked, the way she didn't seem to make a noise. "Would you like a glass of orange juice?" The older woman asked.

Briony jumped, she hadn't gotten much sleep after the incident last night and it had made her nerves worse than ever. And the twitching, too. Her leg was vibrating against her chair, and her fingers were twitching in her lap. "No, thank you." She answered, clearly her throat and trying not to stare at Moria too much.

"Come now, certainly there's something I can do. The two of you make such little mess, I've had hardly any work at all." Moira said, tapping at the tabletop with her pearly, oval fingernails. Her mother didn't reply, focused on whatever food that she had sizzling in the pan. It smelled like curry but looked like chicken stir-fry. Briony shifted under her gaze, there was just something about Moira that made Briony uncomfortable.

"Don't worry about it." Briony said. And as her mother stepped out of the room, muttering about peppers, she continued speaking. "Just out of curiosity, were all of the doors and windows locked last night?"

Moira nodded, pressing an absent-minded hand to her hair and finding a stray scarlet lock that had loosened from a pin. She fixed it immediately with her unnerving, nimble hands. Briony wondered how she got her hair to be so red, whether she dyed it or not. It had to be artificial, no one had hair _that _red. "Certainly. Why, did you feel a draft?"

"Something like that. I thought I heard something. It was nothing, I guess." Briony said, and regretted mentioning it in the first place. Briony's hand was twitching worse than ever. Moira noticed it and looked down at it, curiously. Briony tried to say something else, change the subject, but she just couldn't get the words out. Something about this house was making her tremors worse than ever.

She turned and walked up the stairs, towards her room. _Haunted. _Briony thought, and the word echoed around in her mind and banged against her eardrums. _The house is haunted._

Moira watches her as she leaves.

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	2. Chapter 2

**While I am rather unhappy about the fact that the next season is going to follow different characters since I've grown to love the original cast so much, I will admit that it gives me a secret thrill that this story could technically be canon. Don't judge me.**

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><p><em>How many centuries since you've climbed a balcony, or do you do this every night with someone else? You tell me that you never leave, and I am almost afraid to believe it. Why is it me you've chosen to follow? Did you like the way I look when I am sleeping, was my hair more fun to tangle? Are my dreams more entertaining? Do you laugh when I'm complaining that I'm all alone?<em>

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><p>When Briony is hospitalized for falling down the steps, she tells her mother that it was because of her tremors that she slipped. She doesn't tell her the truth. She isn't sure how her mother would react to her saying <em>"I think there is a bunch of ghosts in the house, mom. And one of them talked to me today."<em>Even Briony can admit that it sounds totally crazy. Most normal girls would think that it was a gang of criminals or thieves who kept breaking into the house, not jump right into the mostly-ghostly explanation. Well, she never was normal. No matter how hard she tried.

The ghost was a girl. Around Briony's age, she estimated. She wore a loose cardigan and a purple dress, and carried a book in her hands as she ascended the long stairs. For some reason, Briony remembers the book being The Starlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, but it all happened so fast she couldn't possibly be right. The girl spoke to her.

"You have to leave." The girl had said, simply put and matter-of-factly. She didn't rattle chains or make the noises you usually hear ghosts say in old movies. No graveyard moans. She was no Jacob Marley, or some sort of specter. She was pretty, even. The kind of girl Briony would envy if she saw her on the street. She would be prettier, even, if she hadn't looked so sad. Yeah, there was no way that she was a hallucination, that was for sure.

Briony immediately felt herself get dizzy and slip backwards down the stairs, banging her head on the hardwood floor. She laid there for a few moments, feeling the blood gather around her hair as her head spun. She heard a group of voices talking around her. _Look what you did_, one of them hissed. _What if she dies, Violet?_ There was a shuffling noise. A sigh. _Yeah, _someone chuckled. _It's crowded enough as it is. _Briony blinked, tried to unblur her vision and see them. But then she blacked out.

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"You sure you're okay, babe?" Briony's mother asks her as helps her balance on her crutches, walking into the door. Briony doesn't know why she came back to the house, or for that matter, why she hasn't mentioned of it to her mom. It had to have something to do with the fact that she wasn't depending on anyone about it, which was usually the case in the areas of her life - but this was her secret. And maybe she could handle it on her own. Perform an exorcist or whatever the fuck you did for ghosts in the 21st century. Become their friend, maybe.

Moira knew something, Briony had realized as her mother helped her maneuver her crutches into the front yard. And it wasn't just because the lady had a spooky vibe to begin with. No, it was something else. The older woman was watching them from the upstairs window. Her lips were pursed and unmoving but somehow, maybe it was her eyes, Briony got the impression that she was smiling.


End file.
